According to the Luxury Marketing Council, the regular retail mass market experiences a 4% to 6% growth annually. Contrast those numbers to the annual growth of the luxury retail market, which has averaged growth of 20% to 32% each year for the last fourteen years (from 1998 to 2012). Forecasters predicted the luxury market would approach $2 trillion per year in 2014.

Who is purchasing all these luxury products? There are 2.7 million customers in the United States with liquid portfolios of $1 million or more. Of those 2.7 million affluent customers, 1.2 million have a net worth of over $5 million. And their numbers are increasing at the rate of 100,000 per year. Add to that the fact that there were 215 million people in the United States over the age of 50 in 2010. This means over the next 20 years $12 trillion in inheritance will change hands.

Of those getting richer, 10 million of them are self-employed women, entrepreneurs who are running and growing their own businesses. In fact, at least 20% of the people in the workforce are self-employed, and they control a whopping 70% of the wealth. Of those classified as ultra-rich, 50% are self-employed.

The U.S. Census reports provide much interesting information about the affluent self-employed. Seventy